Politics by Numbers is a new series for The Journal where broadcaster, author and spreadsheet stan Gavan Reilly takes a data deep dive into a political point of the week. 

THE FUNNY THING about the energy credits that existed almost every year until last Christmas is that they weren’t originally intended as a cost-of-living measure at all.

Their original genesis was a noble way of returning cash that the country couldn’t spend during the Covid-19 pandemic. Unable to use carbon taxes to pay for measures like home retrofittings due to the public health restrictions, Eamon Ryan simply suggested returning it to households by putting €100 credit on every electricity bill.

Events overtook the plan. It was springtime of 2022 before the necessary laws were passed and by then, the war in Ukraine meant a festive tax refund was being recast as an urgent cost-of-living measure. And, because it was a useful template to take off a shelf and repeat, it will forever now be thought of as an off-the-shelf solution when bills get high.

From the very moment Eamon Ryan suggested the idea, in the weeks before that Omicron-wave Christmas, opposition parties were up in arms. Handing out free cash was all well and good, but there was no cost-of-living crisis at the time: here was a blunt, universal tool to give the same amount not just to every household, but to every domestic premises. A mansion on Millionaire’s Row would get the same credit as a cramped family flat, and as a holiday home used for only a few weeks of the year.

The retorts were twofold: firstly, that there was no pre-existing system to figure out........

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